1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a data transfer system and, more specifically, to an on-line system with an enhanced data transfer protocol for providing data transfer and confirmation of the transfer between clients through an enterprise server.
2. Description of Related Art
The quickening pace of business is putting greater and greater time pressure on business-to-business communications. Bill Gates describes this accelerating trend in his latest book Business @ the Speed of Thought. Yet a fundamental facility is missing. There is no universal facility enabling business processes on different computers, operated by different companies, to interchange and process data instantly. The traditional 3rd party electronic data interchange (EDI) mailbox approach to business-to-business communications introduces a time delay that is counter to this trend. In an attempt to minimize mailbox dwell time, trade partners are forced to repeatedly dial their mailboxes to deposit and receive data. This is wasteful in both time and resources for both the trading partners and the 3rd party mailbox provider. Furthermore, current mailbox services are difficult to integrate with existing applications.
An alternative to 3rd party mailboxing has been for a company to set up its own communications, normally dial up, requiring its trading partners to adhere to whatever communications standards the company has adopted. This approach is expensive to create, expensive to maintain and it is so restrictive to potential trading partners that many may not have the resources to comply.
More recently, companies are implementing systems using Internet e-mail and/or FTP. This approach addresses the mailbox dwell time problem. However, the use of these Internet facilities introduces problems in security, reliability, delivery confirmation and application integration. It's not enough to deliver data quickly. The delivery facility must also provide security, instant delivery confirmation, and a means for seamless application integration.
Below are several known inventions that are illustrative of state-of-the-art systems for data transfer. U.S. Pat. No. 5,742,763, issued on Apr. 21, 1998 to Mark Alan Jones, describes a universal message delivery system for client-server-client communication that optimally assembles messages being transmitted between clients.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,805,823, issued Sep. 8, 1998 to G. Seitz, shows a system and method which provide a messaging architecture for real time, asynchronous data exchange and request handling by multiple client applications in a network. The message architecture uses multiplexed aggregation of messages being sent to client applications, thereby maximizing network efficiency and reducing bandwidth requirements.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,838,910, issued on Nov. 17, 1998 to Steven D. Domenikos et al., describes systems and processes that allow a computer to connect to a server on an Internet site for executing an application program that is stored on a disk linked to that server. Specifically, processes are disclosed that provide a data transport interface for connecting to the server, transport from the server a server address signal representative of a network address of the server, and a path name signal representative of a file system that includes an application program.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,844,969, issued on Dec. 1, 1998 to Shelley B. Goldman et al., describes a communication system, method and device for remotely re-transmitting received electronic mail directed to a destination terminal to a new destination terminal.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,940,070, issued on Aug. 17, 1999 to Ja-goun Koo, describes a device and method for retransmitting an audio signal using a video signal line in a computer system.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,944,783, issued on Aug. 31, 1999 to Joseph Lee Nieten, describes an apparatus and method for data transfers through software agents using client-to-server and peer-to-peer transfers. The apparatus and method are used for information transfer among software agents operating simultaneously on a digital network.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,948,054, issued on Sep. 7, 1999 to Jakob Nielsen, describes a method and system for facilitating the exchange of information between human users in a networked computer system. In a networked computer system including a customer computer associated with a human customer, one or more consultant computers associated with one or more human consultants, and a server computer, the human customer sends an information request to the server via the customer computer.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,987,513, issued on Nov. 16, 1999 to Narayanan Prithviraj et al., describes a network management system which enables a user to manage a network using browsers available on remote computer systems.
International Publication No. 9,821,668, published on May 22, 1998 describes a method and system for managing a complex network of interconnected devices.
None of the above inventions and patents, taken either singly or in combination, is seen to describe the instant invention as claimed.